Week 10: Roasted Almonds for Salvation

Elder Hendrix and his district at the Renfe.

The Hermanas in our district have been teaching a mom and her 10 year old son for a few months now. They're so solid and so ready to be baptized! So they had a baptism date for a few weeks ago, but the night before the baptism, the son broke his leg playing soccer or something. So he was getting a surgery that week, so they changed it for two weeks later. So then came the night before the baptism, and he found out he can't get the cast wet. So they postponed the date again. Well this past Friday, he got the cast off, so we had planned everything for Saturday. Hearing this was so exciting! They want to be baptized so bad and they're so ready! So Elder Gustafson and I headed over to the church Saturday morning to fill the font.Then we got a phone call. The kid had just left a doctor appointment where they put this gel stuff on his leg that he can't wash off for 48 hours. So we called the the mission President to see if it would be ok if we wrapped his leg in saran wrap or something so it won't get wet. It took a few hours to get a hold of him, but we finally did, and he said yes. So we immediately called this family to tell them we're good to go. Well, the metro decided to stop working when they were on their way to the baptism. So they were stuck forever... So long story short, the baptism still hasn't happened. But I know that it will! Sooner or later!!

We had a fun activity this week with the youth. It was called "Como un Misionero", where the youth got to see what missionary life is like! So first, we watched a few videos from The District, then had a competition. A typical morning for a missionary starts with waking up, exercising, eating breakfast, and then studying. So the guys and girls had to race each other to see who could do it the fastest. So first, they had to do 20 curls with a dumbbell, then put on a tie (girls put on a skirt and a cardigan), then peel and eat an orange, then open Preach My Gospel and memorize the 5 lessons in order, then run to the other side of the church to recite them, then the next person in line starts. The guys won, they killed. But it was so much fun to watch! There were 6 guys and 6 girls. After that, we had a reflection. And then Elder Gustafson and I took each of the youth out contacting
on the streets for 20 minutes. It reminded me a lot of my mini mission back in May. Some of them were way nervous, after a few tries at approaching strangers, they built more confidence! It was awesome seeing how just 20 minutes of proselyting changed these youth. For many of them, this was the first time they had had any interaction with missionaries. They had so much fun! A lot of them made comments about how cool it is to just open your mouth and get over any feelings of discouragement, and that once you do it, you start building more
confidence. And then you want to do it again. We had such a good time!

Here's another cool story! So there's this guy who works at his nut stand in the Plaza Mayor in Torrejón. And I've probably bought roasted almonds from this dude at least 10 times. They're amazing. And he's got peanuts, almonds, cashews, everything. Anyway, a few nights ago when we were on our way back to piso, we passed the nut guy, and obviously stopped to buy a bag. We talked to the guy for a while as he was packing up his stand for the night, and he asked about us and who we are, etc. We talked about being here in Spain to teach people about Christ and such, and we ended up teaching him the entire first lesson. And he totally wanted to hear more! We had to leave before we hit curfew, but he gave us his information. He lives in Madrid so we passed his number to the missionaries over there. He was such a cool guy! AND he gave us FREE nuts! Random contacts out in the street can be so amazing! It's the coolest feeling ever leaving a lesson we just ran in to. And I know that teaching by the spirit is what makes these types of lessons successful. We may have not have felt prepared to suddenly start teaching, but the spirit was prepared!

I love the food here still!! There's a really good dish here called tortilla de patatas and its soooo good! Look up a recipe or something and make it. The members here serve it with almost everything. The ice cream here is sooo cheap! I can buy a 2 liter thing of ice cream for 1.50. And it tastes so good! The major brand, Dia, tastes just like Bluebell. Speaking of which, is that stuff back in the market in America yet?? Someone update me!

Well as always, thanks so much for all of your support! I love and miss all of you! Have an amazing week!
Elder Hendrix

Elder Hendrix at the Madrid temple.

Elder Hendrix is SO excited about H&M at the Torrejon Mall.

First sweater purchase.  I think it's getting chilly.

Elder Hendrix's district at the Madrid temple.

Week 9: Pianoooo

So I guess I forgot to click send last week after I typed my email... So here is last week's!

Another great week in Torrejón!  We're teaching a guy named Felix, and he's the coolest dude ever! He's from New York, so, thankfully, he speaks some English! We've taught him all the lessons already and he wants to be baptized! The guy is such a stud. He's always asking questions and wants to learn everything! He's trying to get work off on Sunday so he can come to church more. 

The ward here has 140 active members, and only one of them knows how to play the piano. And she lives about an hour from the church, so she isn't able to come to sacrament sometimes. So they've asked me to be the pianist. I get to practice a lot which is awesome! We went to a baptism of a girl in the ward this morning, and they asked the missionaries to come up with a musical number. So I got to play the piano for the Hermanas. We did a song called Tú eres una hija de Dios, so that was a cool opportunity! I'm sure I'll get to do this a lot in Torrejón. They apparently almost always sing in sacrament without a piano, so this is exciting stuff!

This week we had exchanges with the other elders in our district, so I went with Elder Assaunt out to a city outside of Torrejón called Coslada. Coslada is about the same size as Torrejón, but only has one member in the whole city. They just opened up this area in mission, so we spent the entire day contacting in the streets. We were out walking for several hours with no luck at all. We decided to stop for a second, go find somewhere quiet, and say a prayer. We went about the rest of the evening talking to everyone we saw until it was time to go home. We got on the Renfe to head back to Torrejón, where we found one guy sitting alone. We went and sat next to him and introduced ourselves as missionaries, and he had all these questions about who we were, what we do, etc. And within that 30 minute train ride, we taught him the whole first lesson, placed a Book of Mormon, and set a second appointment. The power of prayer is real! This was such an awesome experience and I know that the Lord hears us when we cry unto Him. That night, as we reflected on our day, I was reminded the importance of enduring to the end. This morning during my personal study, I studied the principal of faith, and I again thought about this experience. It would have been easy to give up, or go back to Torrejón, but we had faith that the Lord would show us a miracle. In Ether 12:6, we learn that we will receive no witness until after the trial of our faith. Never give up! No matter how hard it is, or how badly you want to stop.

Ok funny story of the week. A lot of the time when we approach people on the streets, people respond "tengo prisa" and then they walk off. We probably get that half of the time. "Tengo" means "I have" and "prisa" means "hurry" so it translates to "I'm in a hurry" more or less. Well, Elder Assaunt convinced me that prisa is a disease that's going around Madrid. So for a while, I was really concerned... My companion finally broke the news to me this week what the real meaning is. Haha, what's up with all these sick people around Spain? They've all got prisa!

Anyway, the mission field is amazing! I love it here so much! I'm so happy to be here in Torrejón! Hope you all have an awesome week! The church is true, the book is blue!

Elder Hendrix

Oh, one more thing... Everyone here knows who Jimmy Hendrix is. Whenever I introduce myself here, 9/10 people ask me if I'm related to him. Nobody ever asked that at home.

Random thoughts from Torrejon

Elder Hendrix sent some quick comments and referred to the group email that he would send, but alas... no group email arrived.  So here are a few random thoughts from the email to Mom and Dad. We do love his pictures!

Elder Hendrix and his district in Torrejon with an investigator, Felix.

Elder Hendrix and Elder Gustafsen make corndogs.

The food here is super good! One thing that's really popular is kebab. It's basically a taco shell made of bread with meat, lettuce, and fry sauce inside. There's a really good kebab place right by the church that we always go to after district meetings each week.

The milk here is weird. You don't refrigerate it. It comes in a bag inside a box. It tastes like milk, but at room-temperature, I refuse to consume it. You can get fresh milk here, but it's really hard to find. There's a store pretty close to our piso that has it, but it's pretty expensive. I bought a liter for 4 rows, which is like $5. Everybody drinks/cooks with the shelf milk though. Another thing that's hard to find is peanut butter. Last p day, I really really wanted a pb&j sandwich, so we spent like 2 hours trying to find some peanut butter. We never found any, but Paolo ordered me some cause she gets a bunch for her cakes already. It tastes super good! The only American products I've seen so far are Doritos, Coke, Oreos, and Twix.

Euros are freaking sweet. They're colorful. I've come to realize how boring US money is haha. One thing that's really nice about Spain is that tax is already included in the cost of everything. And nothing is annoyingly priced like at home. Like there's no $1.49, or $9.99. It's rounded up to like $1.50 or $10.00. 

The weather here is perfect. Definitely beats Arizona! The high temp everyday this week is around 18C which is like 65ish Fahrenheit I think. I don't know for sure. But it's awesome. The mornings are super nice. It rained a little bit last week.

A sunset from the Renfe.

By the way, I messed up my address in last week's email. If you already sent me something, I'm sure it will get here, but I guess this is what it's supposed to look like...

Elder Logan Hendrix
Plaza de España 1A
Torrejón de Ardoz 
28850 Madrid, Spain 

Keep sending me emails! I get to see them throughout the week! I just can't respond until Monday. Hope everyone has a good week!

Elder Hendrix

Measuring the size of mosquitoes.

From the MTC to Torrejon!

Hello everyone! I'll start with my last day at the MTC.

So Sunday was super cool. I got to do a musical number in 4 sacrament meetings! I played the same Be Still My Soul arrangement I wrote for the devotional I was in last week. So that was super cool!! I'm so happy I made the decision to audition for a musical number because it lead me to several opportunities to express myself through music! I love the piano so much! Anyway, later that evening, we went on our last temple walk. My district got to say goodbye to our zone then. I already miss them so much! I made so many friends in the MTC! But moving on. I was quick to accept the fact that I'd probably never see any of them again (the excitement of going to Spain in a few hours was quite distracting) so I got over it quick. They'll be awesome missionaries though! That night, we had our last class in the MTC. We had a little testimony meeting with our district and said goodbye to our teachers. Such a bittersweet moment. I want to share a little bit of what Elder Smith shared. This being our last class time and last testimony meeting as a district, there was a super strong and warm spirit. Each of these elders became brothers to me. In Elder Smith's insight, he quoted the missionary purpose, but with power. "In less than 12 hours, we'll be on our way to the other side of the world with one purpose: to invite others to come into Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel of Jesus Christ." Ah it was so exciting!! It couldn't have been a more perfect last class! So afterwards, it was time to go back to the residence to pack before bed! We were all finally ready to go around 1 in the morning. So we weren't able to get much rest considering we had to be up at 2:30. We woke up, got ready, and then as a district, we went outside our residence building and sang God be with you til we meet again, and said final goodbyes. The Madrid missionaries had to be at the travel office at 3:30 to head to the airport, so that's me, Elder Lords, Elder Phillips, and Elder Irene.

After a bus ride and two train rides we made it to the airport, and it was the weirdest thing ever. There were people there. Real people. We weren't in the MTC anymore. No more being surrounded by hundreds of missionaries 24/7. This was the real world. What the heck is going on? Why is everyone staring at me weird? What are those weird electronic devices everyone has in their hands? I think they're called cellphones. I can't remember. 

We eventually boarded the plane and I sat next to this guy that spoke only Spanish. Long story short, after about an hour of talking, I placed a Book of Mormon! 

After a three hour layover in Dallas, we boarded the plane to Madrid! And as soon as we took off, it finally hit me. I'm on my way to my mission. This is the last time I'll be in America for two years. I started to freak out a little bit. I couldn't understand anything anyone was saying. Is this Spanish? Why do they talk so fast?? They didn't teach me this language in the MTC?! It was the longest flight ever. It was 10 hours, but felt like at least a few days. I couldn't get any sleep. I tried reading in my scriptures a few times, but it was just so hard to focus. The missionaries were all seated pretty close to each other, and throughout the flight we all just kept looking around at each other and I'm pretty sure we were all thinking the same thing. What in the world did I sign up for?

It was 8:00 in the morning in Madrid when we landed. Walking through the airport was crazy. Everything was in Spanish. None of us knew how to say baggage claim, so that was interesting trying to find. We found the mission president and his wife, President and Hermana Pack, after we got our luggage. It was so nice to hear English again. We got on a bus and they took us to the mission home, where we met the rest of the new missionaries that were in the Madrid MTC. There were 42 of us all together.

Hermana Pack made us breakfast and then we had an orientation for the next few hours. And we got our iPads! All of the missionaries have iPad minis and its soooo nice! We get to use gospel library, email, and the camera. There are a few Spanish apps too that are super helpful. 

So after orientation, they drove us to the chapel right next to the Madrid temple to have our first transfer meeting! The temple here is so amazing! My iPhone background for the past 6 months finally came to life! We all went inside the chapel for the meeting, where I was able to meet a bunch of the missionaries that have been out for a while. I ran into this Elder I knew, Elder Gustafson! Quick story about him... After I got my mission call, I looked up the Madrid Mission blog and found his name. I sent him an email asking about Madrid. As my departure date got closer, I emailed him a bunch asking about stuff I should bring, stuff i won't be able to find in Madrid, etc. So it was really cool meeting him! We sat down and talked for like an hour before the thing started. He seemed like a super cool dude!!

So the transfer meeting started. Freaking out. The four of us elders that were in the same district at the MTC were sitting together on pins and needles! We're about to be assigned our first companion! Our trainer! Before President Pack announced our assignments, the projector decided to stop working. So we had to wait another 15 minutes for it to start up again. The suspense was killing me! So eventually President Pack starts with assignments, and about half way through he calls my name. Here we go. "Elder Hendrix, you are assigned to serve with ELDER GUSTAFSON." What are the odds!! Elder Gustafson and I could not stop laughing!! 

Really quick I'll tell you a little about him. He's from New Hampshire and has been in the field for 8 months. He has 3 sisters, one serving in the Philippines right now. 

Elder Gustafson and Elder Hendrix

Elders Gustafson, Phillips, Aussant and Hendrix.
There are also two hermanas in their district.

So I said good luck to Elders Phillips, Lords, and Irene, and then Elder G and I were off! We are serving in a small city called Torrejón just east of Madrid. About an hour from the mission home. We had to take the metro, and then the Renfe to get here. The Renfe is pretty much a train.

So the train came to our stop, we stepped outside, and boom, Torrejón. This place is so awesome! It's way beautiful! Our piso is about a 5 minute walk from the Renfe. Everyone lives in apartments called pisos. They're really nice! Our piso has 3 rooms and 2 bathrooms. So walked inside, dropped off my bags, and went straight to my first dinner appointment in the field! A family invited us to a noche de hogar (family home evening). As I mentioned earlier, the Spanish here is really different. Maybe I'm just used to the teachers at the MTC talking really slowly and clearly. This appointment was my first time speaking with people here, and it was so hard! They talk so quick! In the MTC, I felt like I learned a ton. But now I feel like I'm starting all the way over again! It's so frustrating. I can understand most of what people say, but I have a lot to work on! I sat at the table with all the kids in the family. They kept making fun of me cause my Spanish is crap. But it was super cool cause they were helping me learn! They would point to objects around the house and ask me what they were in Spanish. Oh and they had Peter Pan on TV, and I'd like to tell you that if you get the chance to watch Peter Pan in Spanish, don't take it. You will forever be creeped out. 

So after dinner, we headed back to the piso, and went straight to bed. I don't think I've ever had a better night of sleep in my life. If I don't count that hour and a half of sleep I got at the MTC, I hadn't slept in over 50 hours. Longest day of my life. Or two days of life. I don't know. Felt like a week. 

So our schedule every day goes something like this:

7:30 - wake up

9:00 - personal study

10:00 - companionship study

11:00 - work

2:00 - return to piso for lunch (unless we eat with members)

3:00 - language study for an hour

4:00 - work

10:30 - return to piso

11:30 - sleep

Here in Spain, they observe siesta, or media dia, which is 2:00-4:00. So everybody goes home. Sometimes we have lunch appointments with the members during this time. Lunch is the big meal. Everyone eats really small portions for breakfast and dinner. 

We only eat with members about twice a week. There's only one ward here in Torrejón, which has about 140 active members. 

Moving on... So my first official day in the field was super cool! We did a bunch of street contacting! It was so cool to practice my Spanish with the people I'm serving! Everyone here is way nice! Everybody wants to talk! Even the people that aren't interested in our message. It's awesome! I love these people! All we do is walk in Torrejón. It's so cool here! This city is really neat. The shops, the buildings, the parks, everything is amazing! And the weather is perfect! Definitely not missing that Arizona heat! 

A street in Torrejon.

We had a district meeting on Wednesday, and guess who's in my district? Elder Phillips from my MTC district!! I'm not the only new guy! Yes! Our district is so solid. There's 6 of us. 4 elders and 2 hermanas. And I feel like we're all already best friends! Elder Phillips' companion is Elder Aussant, and they actually live like 2 buildings down from us. My companion is the district leader.

The food here is AMAZING. I have yet to be disappointed! Lots of meat, lots of rice, lots of papas fritas, but it's all so good! Everybody always has soda with meals, so I unfortunately had to end my 6 year streak of no soda. That's ok though! I have been lead to believe that one of the biggest struggles that a missionary faces is finishing lunch at a members home. The portion sizes are humongous! I have a lot of stomach training to do for sure.

We have a few investigators we've been teaching this week!

Paola: Paola owns a small cake shop in Torrejón. She actually has a baptismal date in November! We visit her and her husband in her shop every other day, and she ALWAYS has some kind of dessert for us! They're a ton of fun and they love the gospel! They always have lots of questions and they read the scriptures a ton!

A cake, which is entirely edible, made by an investigator
named Paola. She owns a small cake shop in Torrejon.

Felix: Felix is 23 years old moved to Spain from New York when he was 6. We play basketball with him really early in the morning sometimes. He's going to school right now. He doesn't have a lot of extra time, so we only get to have lessons with him about once a week. He works in a little burger place in town, so sometimes we go there for lunch and catch him when he's on break. He's really interested in the church! He has been coming to sacrament almost every week.

Osasu: Osasu is in his 20s as well. He was actually just baptized a few weeks ago. He has one son that lives with him. We go visit them in their visa to teach them every few days. His son wants to be baptized! 

We have 12 investigators/recent converts that we teach, but these are the only ones that I've met so far. We have lots of appointments this week!

There a lot of Nigerians here. Probably a quarter of the ward is from Nigeria. They're the coolest people! They're all super funny. According to Elder Gustafson, a lot of them speak English, so I'll be super happy if I get to teach a lesson in English this week haha.

So we got to watch conference all day on Sunday. 4 sessions in one day. In Spanish. I couldn't understand the translator that well, but I'm sure conference was great! :) 

Anyway, I love it here in Torrejón!!! I'm so excited to be here! I'm like 90% sure I'll be in the same piso for my first 3 transfers (18 weeks), so if you'd like to send me a letter, I will gladly accept!! You can send it straight to my piso. Here's my address...

Plaza de España 1A

Torrejón de Ardoz 

Madrid, Spain 28850

Thank you everyone for the love and support!!! I love you all! Sorry my email was so long this week!

Elder Hendrix

"Since nobody has cars, everyone owns these carts they take out
when they go shopping. Grocery stores don't usually give bags, so
people have these carts to take their groceries home. It's really
cool. There's a few shops here with fancy customized carts. I forget
what they're called in Spanish."

"My fancy, clean workspace."

Elder Hendrix arrives in Spain!

Elder Hendrix's mom here and I have a confession.  Logan flew out of Salt Lake City early Monday morning and I was dying.

Yes, it was just as hard as sending him out six weeks ago to Utah.  But thankfully, Logan's big brother, Jordan, met him during his layover in Dallas and reported back about all of his exuberant awesomeness.  There's nothing like an older brother who has gone through a similar experience: different country, same language.

Logan's big brother, Jordan, met him at the Dallas airport on his way to Spain.

Logan on his layover in Dallas.

Logan also was able to call us and he sounded excited and nervous.  Before he left the MTC, each missionary was given a Book of Mormon to hand out during their trip.  Logan happened to sit next to a man who was from Mexico and was headed to Dallas via SLC.  He only spoke Spanish and was interested in where Logan was going, Logan gave the BOM to him, so he was pretty excited that he accomplished that goal right away.

Logan's flight arrived in Madrid on Tuesday morning at 8 am (11 pm Arizona time). But we heard nothing from him.  This wasn't surprising but once again, I was dying.  I took a sub job for his high school choir teacher that day, thinking it would pass the time.  Bad choice.  As the choir sang a beautiful song, I became very emotional.  I told the kids that their singing was so amazing that it made me cry (which was also true).  It was a bit hard to be there with the kids who he performed with last year.  I checked all the missionary moms' Facebook posts, hoping to spot him but no such luck.  Then, at 2:30 this morning (Thursday), I got an email from President Pack's wife. Logan will be serving in the city of Torrejon and Elder Gustafsen is his companion.  I am anxiously awaiting a mailing address.  The best part of the email were these beautiful pics.  Good thing they are digital or they would be a little warped from my tears.  But at least now I can breath a little easier and get my emotions under control!

Elder Hendrix with President and Sister Pack.  
They are from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Elder Hendrix (just behind the sister in the lavender skirt) and his group
of 42 new missionaries who will serve in the Madrid Mission.  This was
taken during their orientation which was held at the Madrid  MTC building.

So, Elder Hendrix is off and running (hopefully not with the bulls)!  Only 4 more days until his next email!

3 MORE DAYS!

3 MORE DAYS!!!!

This week was awesome! I'll start by talking about how my musical number went. So I made up an arrangement of Be Still My Soul and was asked to perform for all the new missionaries this week. I had to show up like an hour early for sound checks and felt pretty confident. And then hundreds of missionaries flooded the room and the nerves hit. I was way excited, but also so nervous that I'd mess up cause didn't really have music, so this was all gonna be from memory. Well, the devotional eventually started, and the MTC president welcomed the 1045 missionaries. 1045. Ugh. Thanks. Anyway, they started with an opening song, then a prayer, and then he gets back up and says "to start today's meeting, we have the opportunity to hear from one of missionaries from Gilbert, Arizona headed to the Spain Madrid mission invite the spirit today with a musical number". Shoot man. Well, I walked up to the front, sat at the piano, said a little prayer to myself, and as soon as I touched the keys, all feelings of nervousness and worry went away. I played through the whole song and, in my opinion, it was the best I've ever played. Way better than what I practiced! And it was so powerful!!! The spirit in the room was so strong! I was totally relaxed and happy and it just felt so amazing to perform for all these missionaries!!! I am sooooo grateful that I had this opportunity! There was an elder that came up to me at the end of the devotional in tears. He said he's been looking for an answer to a question he had for years. He said that during my song, he felt like he was feeling the spirit for the first time in his life. He received an answer. As always, I want to express my gratitude for the gift of music! Music invites the spirit! And the spirit changes lives!!! I am so grateful that I have been blessed with a love for music. It's the best!!!

Part 2 of my performance... There were a few branch presidents that also came and talked to me after the devotional and it looks like I'll be doing musical numbers in 4 sacrament meetingsthis Sunday! I'm so excited!

The Sunday night devotional this week was so epic!!! Lloyd Newell, the director of the Morman Tabernacle Choir, spoke. So of course, he talked about the gift of music!! It was so amazing! We sang a few hymns throughout the meeting and then he would talk about each one of the meaning behind them and it was just super cool! AND Lloyd Newell happens to be the voice in general conference that says "This is the 178th semi annual general conference". So that's actually how he opened his talk! It was so cool!

The Tuesday night devotional was great as well! Elder Craig Cardon spoke! My companion said the opening prayer, so he and I got to sit on the stand the whole time so that was cool! One thing that I got out of his talk was that we are soldiers of Jesus Christ ready to battle. We sacrifice so much, but we're doing it for the best reason! To bring people closer to Christ. Thanks for having such a cool dad Bishop Cardon!

On Wednesday morning, my district had the opportunity to host for new missionaries again! That was way fun! We take the missionaries and their luggage when they get dropped off at the curb and go with them to get their nametags and everything. Then we drop off their stuff in their residence hall and take them to their classroom. One of the missionaries I hosted for was from Galway Ireland going to Gilbert!! 

Yesterday we had in-field orientation. It's for all the missionaries leaving next week. We pretty much just role played for 10 hours. It was kinda hard cause it had to be in English and I'm so used to teaching in Spanish! I don't think I've taught the gospel in English at all in the MTC actually... It was different haha. We did a lot of role playing in an airport setting, so that was cool to practice! I'm so anxious to do it for real in 3 days! I got a few books of Mormon to give away during my travel!

The Spanish is still going well! I'm so excited to use it in Spain! I don't use much English anymore. We did the math this morning and figured out that we've had over 240 hours in the classroom learning Spanish. It's crazy!

This is my last email in the MTC. I have loved every second here. The spirit felt here is incredible. These past 5 and a half weeks have been so amazing and I'm really going to miss this place. But I know that I have been called to serve the people of Madrid, and I'm so excited to get out there. My advice for future missionaries is take advantage of the time you spend here. Do not waste it! Come here ready to learn and work! 

66 hours until I'm headed to the airport to start this adventure. Thank you so much for all of your love and support!!! 

Te amo

Elder Hendrix 

Here is a picture of my district and our teacher, Hermano Chambers,
the shortest one in the middle. (Logan is 4th from the left)

Can you say BUFFET? We have all this food to eat before we leave on Monday!

 

Almost out of here!

I have no idea where to start. This week was crazy!

I guess I'll start by talking about the devotional last week. So after President Heaton asked me to participate, I never heard back from him. So I didn't worry about it. But then the devotional came, and he called up me and 5 other elders to come up to the stand a take a seat. His talk was about recognizing the spirit, so he had a bunch of missionaries in the audience go up to a microphone and tell a story of a time that they felt the spirit and then me and the other elders with me had to find scriptures that go along with their story, and then apply it. So I had to speak in front of the entire MTC like 10 times. It was so scary! But it was a reminder that I need to always be prepared as a missionary! Fortunately, I had just so happened to have hardcore studied the spirit that week, so I had plenty of scriptures that I was able to find quick! It was really nerve racking, but also really fun! We did that for about an hour during the devotional. I'll never forget that experience!

In the Tuesday night devotional, we got to hear from Sister Rosemary Wixom, the General Primary President. Her talk was amazing! She talked mostly about the example of Nephi, and how we need to be obedient in accomplishing the work that we have been asked to do! It made me so excited to be a missionary in the field! Following Sister Wixom's talk, it was completely neccessary that we end with a primary song for the closing hymn, so we sang We'll Bring the World His Truth. Here in the MTC and in the field, we change the lyrics a bit in that song. Instead of singing "and we will be the Lord's missionaries" we sing "and we are NOW the Lord's missionaries". That was the first time I've sung that song here and it was so powerful!! We ARE missionaries! Ah I'm just way excited to go serve!!! I had chills throughout the whole song. The spirit was so there!! After the closing prayer, I was able to go shake her hand, and you can feel the incredible amount of love she has for the missionaries!

Ok the best thing ever happened yesterday! As you all know, I LOVE the piano and making music and everything. Well, yesterday I had the opportunity to audition to perform a musical number in the MTC! I came up with a simple arrangement of Be Still My Soul, and then headed to the audition place! I filled out a form thing and then they took me to the audition room, where i found the judges: the MTC presidency and their wives. Scary stuff. So I played my song, and they said it was so amazing! Normally, I would get a bit nervous performing, but I felt so much confidence! I was just so happy to be able to play!! They told me they would let me know the results in the mailbox later that day, and within a few hours, there it was! I'll be performing at the new missionary welcome devotional next week! They said there will be close to 1000 people, so please pray for me! I'm so grateful for this opportunity! And as always, I want to express my appreciation and love for music!! I'm so grateful for the gift of music in my life and I love how we always sing hymns to start meetings. They invite the spirit!! The piano has taken up most of free time in my life, and I just love expressing myself through music!

The Tongan elder on my floor left this week to Missouri. It was so hard saying bye to him! He was awesome! We tried telling him some jokes the other night and his responses were gold. I think I said this last week, but he didn't know any English before the MTC, and here in the MTC you learn languages quick, but we're really only taught how to teach the gospel. So when we asked him why did the chicken cross the road, his response was (in a thick Tongan accent) "the chicken cross road to die! To get to his Heavenly Father and to return to his chicken family!" Oh man you guys had to have been there!!! Then some said what did one window say to the other? "He say I love you. I love you like Jesus Christ love you. Jesus Christ love all the people here. That's what he said to him." He didn't even know what a window was. I love that dude! He's gonna do great things in Missouri!

Elder Hendrix and the elders in his district.

Elder Lords and I were an hour late to class on Wednesday morning, for a completely valid reason. While we were in the showers, everyone else went ahead and left to class early. I guess that they assumed we had our keys, so they shut the door. They were wrong. We did not have keys. We did not have our keys at all. We were the only ones in the building, we didn't have phones, and we were wearing nothing but towels... Long story short, we eventually made it to class...

Elder Martin (Barcelona), Elder Hendrix (Madrid),
Elder Hammond (Argentina) and Elder Sant (Malaga, Spain)

We had our last lesson with Elias yesterday. He was such a cool dude! It was so awesome watching him progress! For our last lesson, we taught him about enduring to the end and pressing forward. And then we looked at Madrid on google maps on his ipad for half an hour. I'm gonna miss that guy!

Elder Kitchen left for the field this week! It was hard saying bye to him, but he's gonna kill it in England! I'll try attaching a picture of us... these computers are weird..

Missionaries from Gilbert Vintage Ranch Ward: Sister Lee, Elder Hendrix and Elder Kitchen

Only one P day left until I'm off to Espana! I'm so excited to get out there! I know that this gospel is true and I love it and I'm so excited to share it with the people of Madrid! Once again, thanks so much for all the love and support! I miss everyone so much!

Elder Hendrix

One more thing!! I just got my flight itinerary literally 5 minutes ago and I'm out of here on the 28th at 3:30am! 16 hours to get to Madrid! YEEEESSSS!

The paper chain with a link for each day
left in the MTC